Cali Serrano
Baptism oF Fire
Sons of Tangra
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Posted - 2009.03.26 01:46:00 -
[1]
The falcon, as it is, is an overpowered ship. However doing a drastic rework of its range, jamming strength, and roles leaves a very big chance in creating it's exact opposite, a completely worthless ship ( See Pilgrim >.< sorry amarr dudes ). To prevent this I believe any nerfing should be done in nerf-taps not smashes like what generally happens. Say several small changes spaced over a couple of months so the changes can be reviewed and assessed to see if they do what was expected and any unexpected consequences. Takes longer yes, but it is less likely to create a hanger dust magnet. I think the scorpion is fine as is, don't really see a problem except maybe it being underused so nerfing would be redundant and the Kitsune also seems okay (fitting requirements for a good fit and slots do a decent job of keeping it in check). The Widow actually could probably go with a boost, but not a big one. I'm not very familiar with the Rook but what you're proposing sounds interesting and viable.
That being said, the changes I'd like to propose are a range reduction, a strength reduction, and a scaling factor for their use against the different ship classes.
Right now a 200+ Falcon is a bit much, sure the new scan mechanics make it easier to drop on them but in smaller fleets that's not a very viable option and for larger fleets well lag still sucks. I'd say work it out such that the jammers themselves have a max range, with great skills and at the outside edge of their falloff, somewhere along 170 to 180km. This means a range of 150 - 160 is still possible with good skills but it puts the falcons at the edge of their falloff with a slight loss in strength.
Along with the range reduction, a small, say 5% reduction to their bonus, drop in jam strength would reduce their overpowering aspect by still lowering their chance to jam with out lowering them to only jamming one ship ( in which case it'd probably be better to bring a BS ). Let them have a good chance to jam 2 ships, and a low end of ok chance to get 3. Sure still a mean thing to do to a small fleet, but it beats 5 or 6 and doesn't leave them complete sitting ducks.
The biggest part of my proposal though is the scaling factor, hence why I simply said ships instead of picking a ship size or class. Right now I believe one of the biggest concerns is not their effeciveness in larger fleets, but on small gang and small ships.
*For the below I'm figuring a Falcon with my above changes jamming at it's optimal on a ship with no eccm*
Cruisers are basically a 1 jammer per ship for falcons ( especially you minmatar folks .. wait that's what I fly ) and frigates are just hosed. My suggestion is the use of the signature radius of the target ship versus the signature resolution of the jammers themselves ( would need to be added, but it's there on all the guns so I don't think it'd be a big change ) be used to reduce the effectiveness of the jammers as well. Ideally this would make it so the falcon cannot jam out 6 or 7 frigates or cruisers at max range but bring it back down to the 2 or 3 I mentioned above.
The biggest trouble with this is that most T2 frigates have as good as or better sensors than the cruisers, and I'm not quite sure how to make this work with existing stats on the ships. The T1 frigates should still be essentially hosed, but T1 cruisers should have a slim chance to slip out of a single jammer and T2 cruisers ( HAC's ) maybe a slightly worse than even ( say 35 or 40% ) chance of not being jammed with one jammer, and interceptors and assault ships being slightly better than T1 cruisers but worse than T2 cruisers at avoiding jamming. Stealth bombers and electronic attack frigates should be as hard to jam or maybe even a touch harder than T2 cruisers ( SB's even or a touch under and EAF even or a touch above ). For battlecruisers and battleships, they should recieve the full effect of the jammer ( they're big targets ) but as I mentioned I think the big problem is a falcon's ability to lock out smaller fleets. This would probably necessitate a reworking of the T2 frigate sensor strengths but it would allow a degree of scaling that the current system lacks.
Under further consideration, I wouldn't mind a cycle time reduction down to 10 or 15 seconds, still puts them out of the fight for time but it's not as long and there are more chances for them to slip the jam. Also for got to mention, with the sliding scale both active ECCM and passive modules would become more effective for all ship classes (depending on how effective it is per ship class, class specific modules or an adjustment to the slide I've proposed might be necassary).
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